Taliban attack on Pakistan army post leaves 35 dead

Taliban militants killed at least nine soldiers and four paramilitary troops in an attack on a Pakistani Army base in northwestern Pakistan early Saturday, officials said.

The raid on the army post in Serai Naurang town, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province began before dawn and lasted for several hours, said senior police officer Arif Khan Wazir. The militants were armed with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades, he said.

Another official said that the civilians were killed when one of the suicide bombers ran into a house as security forces attempted to repel the attackers from the checkpost.

“A suicide bomber entered a nearby house in a residential colony of the irrigation department and blew himself up. Four children, three women and four men were killed there,” said Nisar Ahmed, a senior government official.

The raid followed a suicide bombing at a Shi’ite Muslim mosque elsewhere in the northwest on Friday that killed 24 people, police said. The blast was the latest in a rising number of sectarian attacks in the country.

The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for both attacks. The group has been waging a bloody insurgency against the government for years and also has sometimes targeted the country’s minority Shi’ites, whom the militants consider to be heretics.